What is a calorie? Well, in my own language if asked I say: A calorie is basically energy that you gain from eating, and drinking. Not all things have calories. Water for instance, has no calories. Water does cause you to burn calories, but not enough to change anything. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to promote a diet.

Why are calories important? They are what make you who you are body wise. If you take in too many calories, you GAIN weight. If you take in too less, you LOSE weight. If you take in the right amount, you stay at a constant weight. That is called your Maintenance level. If you stay at that, you will neither gain weight or lose it. Now, how do you do this? Simple. A calorie calculator. I use this: Calorie Calculator - Daily Caloric Needs

These cannot be exactly accurate, everyone has different genetics, but that is about as precise as you really need. So, if you want to lose weight, it is simple, calorie deficit. If you want to gain weight, calorie up. I do -1000 calories with my diet, then add about -400 calories due to my cardio/exercise. So, -1400 calories a day, x7 I lose 9800 calories, which is around 2+ pounds of fat a week, although that is a good chunk of muscle since I am not allowed to weight lift currently .

It doesn't matter how many fat grams, carbs, or protein is in anything, if your taking in too much. Although, if you get in-depth: I advise this for anyone: Majority Protein, low carb/low fat. Why? Fat/Carb has more calories per then Protein.

Calories are the key to weight control...Study Finds Calories, Not Protein, Are Key to Weight ControlJanuary 10, 2012 - A new study may help end the perpetual debate over how best to maintain or slim down to a healthful weight. Researchers found that, while there are many elements to a good diet, carefully limiting calorie intake is the most important part of controlling one's weight.

Sixty percent of U.S. adults are overweight and more than thirty percent are obese. But Americans arent the only ones struggling with their waistlines. The World Health Organization reports that obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than one billion adults overweight. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian studies the relationship between diet and chronic diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We need a shift, a paradigm shift, in our focus on and attention to diet," Mozaffarian said. But people trying to change their eating habits and reduce their weight must sort through a bewildering variety of diets. Some recommend cutting out carbohydrates. Others say cut out the fat, eat more protein, eat less protein. The messages can be confusing.

Dr. George Bray, at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in the southern state of Louisiana, wanted to find out if protein affects weight gain. "This study was designed to examine the effects of differing levels of protein on total calorie intake," Bray said. Twenty-five healthy adults participated in the study. Daniel Kuhn was one of them. He and the others were overfed by almost a thousand calories a day. "I was eating a lot of real butter, real whipped cream and things of that nature that I don't normally indulge in," Kuhn said.

All of the participants followed low, normal or high protein diets. The result: all of them gained weight. Fat storage was exactly the same with all three levels of protein. That is, it was the calories that they ate that affected the body fat that they stored, Bray said. But those who ate a higher percentage of protein gained more lean body mass while those on a low protein diet experienced just the opposite. If your protein intake's low, you'll actually lose body mass even though you're eating an excess amount of calories, Bray said.

Dr. Bray tells his patients to get on the scale regularly so they can catch added weight early. Dr. Mozaffarian says keeping weight in check is not just about eating less. "We don't need to go down a list of 'avoid this, avoid that,' and becoming the food police. It's mostly foods that should be increased. Its fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, vegetable oils and nuts," Bray said. Dr. Mozaffarian says increasing these six foods by about a serving each day would reduce obesity - and help slow the epidemic of chronic diseases associated with it. Dr. Bray's study on protein, calories and weight gain was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Granny says the key word here is slightly...Being Slightly Overweight May Reduce Risk of Dying January 02, 2013 - People who are slightly overweight or mildly obese have a lower risk of early death than normal weight individuals, according to a new analysis of nearly 100 international studies.

The studies, most conducted within the past decade, included about three million adults from around the world. A collective analysis of these studies by researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics in Maryland, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reveals that slightly overweight or obese individuals were six percent less likely to die from all causes compared to people of normal weight. But the researchers found that severely obese individuals were still at a 30 percent greater risk of death compared to healthy-weight individuals. The analysis involved studies conducted in the U.S., Canada, China,Taiwan, Brazil, India and Mexico.

Study lead author Katherine Flegal says she was not surprised that overweight people would not have a higher death risk. "Because we'd actually already read a lot of this literature and realized that [mortality rates for] overweight would be at least not higher than normal weight," she said. "I guess I was a little bit surprised that it was definitely lower. And I was also surprised that the lower rates of obesity didn't seem to differ from normal weight." But Flegal stresses the difference in mortality rates appear to be small between normal-weight people and overweight and mildly obese individuals.

The finding by Flegal and colleagues have raised new questions about the reliability of the so-called "body mass index" or BMI, a measurement of body fat as a ratio of height to weight, that has been promoted in recent years by public health experts as a barometer of potential health risks. Steven Heymsfield, executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, says a fit individual may be perfectly healthy but might weigh more because of extra muscle mass. It's very common in the military, for example, where you have young men and women who are very physically fit - their BMI can be a little higher. And so the military knows that and they check that with body fat measurement if they exceed the BMI guidelines," Heymsfield said.

But Heymsfield cautions that individuals should not conclude that it's okay to put on extra kilograms, since being at a healthy weight lowers the risk for heart disease and diabetes. An article by the CDC's Katherine Flegal and colleagues, and an accompanying editorial by Steven Heymsfield, are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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